1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the field of the Internet. More particularly, the present invention relates to an improved system and method for identifying unique users accessing a web site.
2. Description of the Related Art
Internet commerce has become an increasingly popular form of commerce in the United States and throughout the world. In general, Internet-based commerce, often referred to as e-commerce, provides advantages to both suppliers and consumers. E-commerce provides vendors and service providers the ability to greatly increase their sales channel and distribution network with minimal cost. An Internet commerce site provides a convenient, effective and secure mechanism for potential buyers to browse, select and purchase goods or services in an easy and simple fashion.
An important consideration for owners and/or operators of web sites, which have been designed to handle Internet commerce, is the amount of web traffic flowing through the site. There are various metrics used to measure web traffic. Various web traffic analysis and tracking software is available to provide the owners and/or operators of web sites with detailed statistics. One commonly used metric, for example, is the number of web page accesses or web hits on a page of a web site. Many Internet sites display a counter to show the number of visitors since last counter reset. The number of web hits per page, measured over a given time period, may have a significant impact on the advertising revenues generated by the web site.
Web site logs and other software designed to measure and analyze web traffic, can provide a wealth of additional information regarding the user. For example, it may include detail such as the operating system of user's computer, web browser software used to access web site, hourly/daily/weekly frequency distribution of web hits, Internet Provider (IP) address of user, country of registration for the user's Internet Service Provider (ISP), etc.
Although it has been possible to get detailed statistics referenced above, such as the number of raw hits per web site, the data collected is often incorrect, inadequate and often misleading. Up to now, it has been difficult to accurately identify and count the number of clients accessing a web site. For example, raw hit data shows the number of times each file has been requested at a web site. It can give an idea of the number of clients visiting a web site. However, it may not be able to disclose further detail. Assuming 1,000 hits were recorded on a web site, the raw hit data may not be able to report whether the hits were generated by 10 visitors racking up 100 hits a piece, or by 200 visitors creating five hits each, or by one visitor creating 1000 hits.
One prior art method to identify unique, distinct or individual users is based on the use of cookies. Cookies are identifiers placed on a user's computer system by a web site that the user may have visited. Web sites may use cookies to identify and track a user's movement through the web site. The use of cookies is thus considered an intrusive technology. Many Internet users have expressed concerns over the privacy issues related to the use of cookies. In order to protect their privacy, many users disable the use of cookies (a standard option in many of the popular web browsers). Furthermore, some types of browser software and earlier versions of popular web browsers do not support the use of cookies. Also, users can refuse cookies on a per cookie basis, or modify their local cookie file at will. As a result, it has been difficult to accurately identify and count individual users using cookies.
Another prior art method to identify individual users is to require user registration before entering a web site. This method, in many respects, is similar to the use of cookies. However, unlike cookies (which have become virtually transparent and often unknown to the user) the user must knowingly enter self-identifying information to gain access to the web site. Many Internet users have expressed concerns over the privacy issues related to the need for user registration to enter a web site, in addition to the inconvenience of remembering yet another user ID and password. As a result, it has been difficult to accurately count individual and distinct users who have not participated in user registration.
Yet another prior art method used to identify individual users is tracking Internet Provider (IP) addressed to identify users. However, larger Internet Service Providers (ISP's) such as America On-line (AOL) use a proxy server. A proxy server sits between a client application, such as a web browser, and a real web server located on the Internet. The proxy server intercepts all requests to the real server to see if the proxy can fulfill the requests itself. If not, the proxy server forwards the request to the real web server. It may be possible for hundreds or perhaps thousands of clients, such as AOL clients, to be accessing a web site simultaneously but may still show the same IP address. As a result, it has been difficult to accurately identify and count individual users who may have been assigned to the same proxy server.
For these reasons, it would be desirable to provide an improved method and system for counting individual users accessing a web site. It would be desirable for the improved method and system to use non-intrusive technology, which would address the privacy concerns of users, yet at the same time be able to identify individual users accessing a web site. It would be desirable for the improved method and system to identify and count all unique users logged on to a proxy server and accessing the web site.